Member

It is my contention that the proposal for the inclusion of a learning centre as currently planned is wholly misconceived and needs to be scrapped in its current form. The decision to create a learning centre in addition to a memorial to the Holocaust lies at the heart of many of the criticisms of this project, and I ask the Government to think again about whether they should really be backing this ill-thought-out addition to a memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens. There can certainly be a learning centre somewhere else, but this site is too small to construct a viable learning centre. In addition, because of the constrictions in the overall size, the proposed centre is too small to encompass a learning centre providing an exhibition that can fully explore the historical background of anti-Semitism in Europe as well as the development of persecution of the Jewish population over more than a decade, first in Germany and then in countries conquered by the Germans. Obviously, such an exhibition would also need to cover fully the establishment of concentration camps, the transporting of Jews and other victims to them, the forced labour and torture of those imprisoned and the final solution, as the Nazis described it, in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and elsewhere. It would need to include what was known about the existence of the camps in Germany and elsewhere, and it would need to cover the liberation and what happened to the survivors, covering a wide range of their individual stories. I also hope that the learning centre and its contents would reflect how these horrific events could be prevented from ever happening again in Europe. All of this suggests that a large amount of space is needed to do justice to the wide range of issues that need to be covered. Unless that space is provided, the young people and children who might visit it would do just as well to stay in their schools and be taught about the Holocaust in a way that fully represents the horrors of what happened.